Ed Singler said it was a perfectly manicured rose garden. His wife, Kris, said it would be more accurately described as an English cutting garden. There were some roses, but also other flowers that one could snip during the summer to create artistic flower arrangements.

When Ed and Kris Singler bought the house in Medford in late spring 13 years ago, the cutting garden would have been blooming.

Not for long.

The former owner “probably died when she saw that concrete slab being poured,” Kris Singler said.

Where flowers once thrived, the Singlers built a sports court. There was a basketball hoop and a three-point line. You could play tennis, hockey, volleyball.

Their sons, Kyle and E.J., were just finishing second grade and kindergarten. Over the years, with older sister Katen and with cousins and friends, the brothers would play many hard-fought games on that sports court.

As the kids grew there was also a trampoline, and eventually the boys dragged the trampoline to the sports court so they could launch themselves for acrobatic dunks.

“It wasn’t exactly what a parent wanted to see, someone dunking off a trampoline, but they did it,” Kris Singler said.

“And we’d say ‘be careful.’ ”

The boys no longer need a trampoline on the basketball court.

Kyle is a star at Duke, the defending national champions and nation’s top-ranked team. His photo graces magazine covers. He was named the most outstanding player in the Final Four and is a preseason first-team all-America candidate who passed up selection in the first round of the NBA draft to play his senior season for the Blue Devils.

E.J. is a sophomore at Oregon, a “blue collar” starter, as he’s often described, for a rebuilding program.

When Duke and Oregon face each other Saturday afternoon in the Rose Garden in Portland it will mark, in their memories, the first time the brothers have played against each other in an organized game.

But that wouldn’t count scrimmages when they were teammates at South Medford High School, or all the games on the sports court, built over the garden that once had roses.